Don Biter's 1956 Model 165 — Before and After

Hello, my name is Don Biter and I am an avid Hummerer. My daily ride is a 1956 ST 165 that I rescued from someone's garbage in 1976. I was 16 years old then, and the bike was in a gazillion pieces and I didn't have any idea what it even was, but free bikes are free bikes. I fooled around with it for awhile, but then put it in my dad's basement until I could figure out what it was and what it needed. That was 1979. I took a number of pictures back then, but somehow they got lost.

Fast forward to 2010 - 31 years later. Thanks to your web site and prodding from my dad to do something with it, I took it out of storage, and began working on it. I took some pictures, but my computer died a horrible death, and the pictures were lost. Fortunately, I had printed some out and stashed them, so you can see what it looked like then. This isn't the way I found it, this is what it looked like after I fixed it up some and put it away because I couldn't find any more parts. It was worse before! I had what was left of the engine, stored separately in pieces in a box.

Two years later, it's restored to its former glory. I have a huge background in building custom bikes, cars, and trucks, so I was able to do all the work myself, with help from my new hero, Mutt. I know some people will be upset because it has a few custom features, but I have a bad habit of customizing my stuff to suite my tastes.

I also wanted to mention that the original color was tangerine, but my wife refused to let me redo it unless she picked the color. She hates orange, but I told her it was OK because she can't live forever - I will repaint it then. Also just because I live in Florida, I did the seat in alligator; I think it looks better on the bike than it did on the gator. Thank you to everyone for helping with this project, life is always better with a Hummer or two!